you belong with me
by curtaincall2
Summary: Because Jake's favorite singer is Taylor Swift.


The Nine-Nine's favorite bar is having karaoke night, and Jake Peralta is getting really fucking drunk.

This is unusual in and of itself, because normally Jake's the one who doesn't need to be even a little bit drunk to get totally into karaoke.

Of course, he usually only picks songs that aren't incredibly embarrassing for a man in his thirties to know all the lyrics to, and tonight he's throwing caution to the winds and singing what's in his heart.

Because Amy Santiago's engaged.

Engaged to stupid Teddy, who's so stupid and nice and successful and probably owns multiple pairs of dress shoes and doesn't keep his mail in the bathtub, and who has a stupid face and a stupid laugh and a stupid smile that he's fixing on Amy.

Okay, so Jake might be a little bit incredibly drunk already.

But not too drunk to realize, pissed off as he is, that it's one hundred percent completely and totally his own fault that he's so fucking sad right now. If he hadn't been such a stupid fucking idiot, if he hadn't been so blind to his own fucking feelings right up until basically the last second she was available, if he'd grown up and gotten a life and been a man who was even a little bit deserving of the tightly wound gorgeous little ball of neuroses and secret passions that was Amy Santiago, then maybe he wouldn't be sitting here right now downing shot after shot, trying to get his blood alcohol content high enough to block out the memory of her face breaking into a shocked and delighted smile when Teddy knelt down before her (so different from her face when he'd fake-proposed that one time, God, what he'd give to have her look at him like that), the memory of her arms around him as he weakly muttered congratulations, the memory of Boyle's hand on his shoulders, whispering "Rough luck, buddy," like he, Jake, was the loser.

Not that Amy was, y'know, a prize or whatever, but he was kinda too drunk to parse his sentences properly.

Gina's belting out the last notes of "Rolling in the Deep," to universal applause (Amy's head is nestled up against Terry's neck, and he tries not to think about the way her hair smells), and she holds up the microphone. "Who wants to go next, suckers?"

"I do!" Jake shouts, and runs with an ungainly energy up to take the mike from her, picks up the remote and picks his song without even thinking about it.

"Yeah, Jake!" someone yells from the crowd, and he throws out a salute before starting into the first verse of Taylor Swift's "You Belong with Me."

Yeah, he fucking likes Taylor Swift, and right now he doesn't care who knows it.

"If you could seee that I'm the one who understands you," he warbles, his eyes fixed on Amy.

The bar's still rowdy, but it feels dead silent.

Everyone chimes in on the chorus, and he does a weird little half-jig thing on the instrumental, but when he gets to the bridge he stops moving, sinks to his knees, and sings from the bottom of his nauseated stomach and his hollow heart:

"I remember you were driving to my house in the middle of the night; I'm the one who makes you laugh when you know you're 'bout to cry; I know your favorite songs and you tell me 'bout your dreams; think I know where you belong, think I know it's with meeeeeee…."

"Whoo!" Boyle shouts from the back of the bar, and it's back to normal, he's finishing the song to the floor-pounding applause of his colleagues, and he hands off the microphone to Terry and steps off the stage.

He feels like he's gonna puke.

So he staggers towards the bathroom, empties his guts into the toilet, and wets a paper towel to wipe off his sweaty face.

He looks at himself in the mirror: his eyes are bloodshot, his hair disheveled, his shirt stained. He's not the kind of guy Amy could ever love. He's a mess.

Apparently it's Irony Day in this Brooklyn bar, because he bumps into her on his way out of the bathroom.

"Sorry," he says, and moves to go past her, but she puts a hand on his chest and stops him.

"Jake," she says, her eyebrows pushed together in worry, "are you okay? I think you better not drink any more."

"Yeah, I'm not gonna," he says wearily.

"I have to ask," she starts, and pauses, then shakes her head and goes on. "Sorry. I'm drunk too. I have to ask...were you singing to me?"

"Yeah," Jake says, looking at the ground, too tired and miserable to deny it. "Kind of a dick move. Don't worry about it. You belong with whoever you wanna be with."

"I know," Amy says.

"And for real, I hope you're happy. Teddy's, he's a good guy. His face is stupid, but he's a good guy."

"He really is," Amy says, and giggles.

"What's so funny?"

"It's really not funny. It's really-I'm kind of a bitch."

"Why?"

"'Cause Teddy's a good guy. And I'm doing this." She leans in and kisses him, and her mouth tastes like amaretto liqueur and vanilla Chap-Stick, and it's drunken and sloppy and gross and incredible.

He pulls away from her. "What...what the fuck are you doing?"

Her eyebrows are knotted together again. "Nothing. I-nevermind. I don't know."

And she's gone, and Jake still has Taylor Swift stuck in his head.


End file.
